THE GENEVA TALKS AND THE EUROPEAN UNION: CONDITIONALITY AND SOCIAL LEARNING OR STRATEGIC SOCIALIZATION?

The Geneva Talks – a negotiations’ framework founded after the EU brokered ‘Cease-Fire Agreement’ ending the dramatic August 2008 war between Georgia and Russia – has brought only marginal progress. It is thus striking why the European Union could not make the Geneva Talks a successful story. The paper discusses the EU instruments and mediation types to explain the failure. The analysis reveals that the EU mediation styles have been only partially effective. It also demonstrates that EU conditionality and social learning have failed to succeed because of a strong ‘patron’ state in the region – Russia. The examination further suggests that the separatists merely and strategically socialize themselves to get more benefits rather than to internally change their deep-rooted interests. The paper thus concludes that because of these shortcomings the EU has been incapable of pushing the negotiations to a successful end.